Professional Graphic Design & Desktop Publishing (InDesign)

Diploma DES12
Design & Photography
Learning Method: Correspondence with online support

Tutorial 1. Graphic Design Fundamentals

Topic 1: Joining the world of the designer
Topic 2: Your design workspace
Topic 3: Graphic design and desktop publishing applied
Topic 4: Communicating a message
Topic 5: The principles of good design
Topic 6: Understanding the elements of design
Topic 7: Designing with montage
Topic 8: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 2. Design Process and Layout

Topic 1: Developing sound professional designer practices
Topic 2: The design brief
Topic 3: Designing to deliver
Topic 4: Presenting designs
Topic 5: Establishing a design space
Topic 6: Graphics in action
Topic 7: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 3. Designing with InDesign

Topic 1: Understanding indesign
Topic 2: Theory of establishing a design space
Topic 3: Touring InDesign CS online
Topic 4: Page setups using indesign
Topic 5: Selecting and manipulating
Topic 6: Understanding and using drawing tools
Topic 7: Working with text
Topic 8: The basics of colour
Topic 9: Creating layouts and applying InDesign CS processes learned so far
Topic 10: Designing business cards
Topic 11: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 4. Typography, Text and Illustration

Topic 1: Defining typography
Topic 2: Type terminology
Topic 3: Choosing fonts to enhance your designs
Topic 4: Creating legible, readable typography
Topic 5: Typography, text and illustration
Topic 6: Creative typography design
Topic 7: Principles of business identity design
Topic 8: Letterhead design and layout
Topic 9: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 5. Commercial Graphic Design

Topic 1: Designing to promote—brochure design
Topic 2: Basics of brochure design
Topic 3: Designing with colour
Topic 4: Applying colour for impact
Topic 5: Familiarising with InDesign CS
Topic 6: Graphics in action—creating promotional design layouts
Topic 7: Designing creative brochures using InDesign CS
Topic 8: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 6. Desktop Publishing and Pre-Press
Topic 1: Function of newsletters
Topic 2: Visualising and designing newsletters
Topic 3: Designing newsletters using InDesign CS
Topic 4: Creating reader-friendly newsletters
Topic 5: Applying design tools for creative and legible layouts
Topic 6: Creating tables
Topic 7: Designing a newsletter following the design process
Topic 8: Managing newsletters—managing clients
Topic 9: Managing print media
Topic 10: Creating A4 page A4 newsletter using indesign cs
Topic 11: Tutorial summary

 Tutorial 7. Attracting Attention: Creative Layouts

Topic 1: Visualising and designing a full colour brochure
Topic 2: Creative effects using InDesign CS—transparency
Topic 3: Creative effects using drop shadows and feathering
Topic 4: Preparing artwork designs to print
Topic 5: Exporting to pdf proof
Topic 6: Researching and evaluating the target market for brochure design
Topic 7: Re-visiting the fundamentals of brochure design
Topic 8: Revisiting brochure layout design
Topic 9: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 8. Books and Long Documents

Topic 1: Visualising and designing multi-page layouts
Topic 2: Developing multi-page documents
Topic 3: Production of multi-page documents within InDesign CS
Topic 4: Maximising efficiency while maintaining consistency in style
Topic 5: Creating reader-friendly multi-page documents in InDesign CS
Topic 6: Designing multi-page documents
Topic 7: Preparing files for printing
Topic 8: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 9. Image and Composition

Topic 1: Images and graphic design
Topic 2: Sourcing photographs and illustrations
Topic 3: Fundamentals of photography in graphic design
Topic 4: Developing technical skills to enhance creative design
Topic 5: Designing magazine spreads
Topic 6: Preparing files for printing
Topic 7: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 10. Professional Design Practice

Topic 1: Digital delivery of artwork for print
Topic 2: The art of managing design
Topic 3: Organising your time
Topic 4: Finalising designs
Topic 5: Commissioning and liaising with commercial printers
Topic 6: Graphics in action – creating a package and label design
Topic 7:Ttutorial summary

Tutorial 11. New Media

Topic 1: History of graphic design
Topic 2: New media and future design practice
Topic 3: Developing technical skills to enhance creative design
Topic 4: Managing production—maintaining good work habits
Topic 5: Creating a DVD or CD-ROM sleeve, tray, label and multi-page booklet
Topic 6: Tutorial summary

Tutorial 12. Marketing Yourself: Your Portfolio

Topic 1: Launching a career in graphic design and desktop publishing
Topic 2: The business of design
Topic 3: Managing your time
Topic 4: Developing a creative work environment
Topic 5: Marketing your business
Topic 6: Marketing yourself—your portfolio of work
Topic 7: Marketing yourself—your CV and covering letter
Topic 8: Tutorial summary

Career Focus
Career opportunities include: Graphic Designer, Desktop Publisher, Freelance Graphic Design and Desktop Publisher.

Industries include: all businesses, particularly the printing and publishing industries, but graphic designers can specialise in the music industry, advertising, corporate, and so on.

Graphic designers and desktop publishers produce designs and layouts of text and images for reproduction in print and electronic media such as advertising and promotion, events and exhibitions, packaging and product covers, magazines and newspapers, books and websites, and for corporate stationery and branding materials.

The beauty of Adobe InDesign and the reason why it is so popular and has become the industry standard is because it can be used for both graphic design and desktop publishing.

Essentially, graphic designers will plan, design and produce the material, getting it ready for reproduction (print or web). This is called ‘prepress’ and usually involves a combination of text and graphics, though it can be just text or graphic in nature. In 1922 William Addison Dwiggins, a book designer, coined the term ‘graphic design’ to describe his role: bringing structural order and visual form to printed communications. So the term took hold.

This is how the dictionary defines graphic design: “The practice or profession of designing print or electronic forms of visual information, as for an advertisement, publication, or website.”

A desktop publisher, on the other hand, means to use a computer to produce high-quality printed documents. Desktop publishing software allows you to use a variety of typefaces, specify different margins and justifications, and embed photographs, images and graphs directly into the text. So a desktop publisher lays out the text and/or graphics on the page.

Graphic designers may:

talk to clients or colleagues to gain a clear understanding of their requirements and sketch ‘roughs’ of the design
prepare quotes for work to be undertaken
prepare layouts of the design using a graphic design application
provide design to clients for their approval
prepare final designs ready for print
obtain quotes from printers
flight-check files for readiness and export to Acrobat
transmit design files in PDF format to printers
check proofs for correctness: colour, layout, bleed, etc.
sign off proofs for final production (web, print or other media)

Desktop publishers may:

talk to clients or colleagues to gain a clear understanding of their layout requirements
prepare quotes for work to be undertaken
set up the document and pages according to the requirements
prepare and insert word processed text and other images provided
format the text and images according to the design requirements
proof text format and layout (and sometimes content if the role includes proofreading)
transmit design files in PDF format to department or send straight to print
check proofs for correctness: format, layout, correctness, etc.
sign off proofs as checked
You can now see the difference between these two roles but also the close relationship in the tasks. In most cases, a freelancer or in-house designer will combine both jobs, doing graphic design and desktop publishing. This person will usually start out doing desktop publishing while they build up their graphic design skills through experience. This is because graphic design requires a higher skill level than desktop publishing.

Finally, many people ask what the different is between the common applications. Adobe Creative Suite (which has: InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Acrobat and other applications bundled in) is the industry standard for graphic design, desktop publishing, photo editing and illustrating.

Graphic Design applications: InDesign, QuarkXpress, CorelDRAW (QuarkXpress and CorelDRAW are direct competitors of InDesign).

Desktop Publishing applications: InDesign, Pagemaker, MS Publisher (though MS Publisher is nowhere near the level of InDesign and Pagemaker doesn’t have InDesign’s graphic design capabilities).

Photo Editing applications: Photoshop (there is no question that Photoshop is the leader here).

Painting and Illustrating applications: Illustrator, CorelPainter (some painting/illustrating applications offer some things that others don’t so many illustrators/cartoonists/digital painters and drawers will jump between one or two applications).

Document Portability: Acrobat PDF is the standard. Acrobat comes in both the professional version for creating/writing PDF documents and the free Acrobat Reader version. InDesign includes the professional version for creating/writing and exporting documents for e-mail and print.

Understanding Adobe Software Versions

This is how Adobe software versions work. CS stands for ‘Creative Suite’.

Photoshop:
Version 4
Version 5
Version 6
Version 7
Version 8 = CS
Version 9 = CS2
Version 10= CS3
Version 11= CS4
Version 12= CS5

InDesign:
Version 1
Version 1.5
Version 2
Version 3 = CS
Version 4 = CS2
Version 5= CS3
Version 6= CS4
Version 7= CS5

Illustrator:
Version 7
Version 8
Version 9
Version 10
Version 11 = CS
Version 12 = CS2
Version 13 = CS3
Version 14= CS4
Version 15= CS5

Acrobat:
Version 1
Version 2
Version 3
Version 4
Version 5
Version 6 Standard = CS Standard
Version 6 Professional = CS Professional
Version 7 Standard = CS2 Standard
Version 7 Professional = CS2 Professional
Version 8 Standard = CS3 Standard
Version 8 Professional = CS3 Professional
Version 9 Standard = CS4 Standard
Version 9 Professional = CS4 Professional
Version 10 Professional = CS5 Professional

About the Course
This course has been developed by a professional graphic design and desktop publishing team so that it meets the requirements of the industry. Each tutorial is presented in full colour and is packed with practical activities. You will also have real graphic design and desktop publishing projects to do that will give you a real industry portfolio upon completion. Plus your course includes CS2, CS3, CS4 or CS5 online movie tutorials. In addition, you will have online access to interactive activities in the eLearning Centre to further practise and test your knowledge and skills. And you can talk with other students from all over the country in the Student Forum.

Materials: Your course includes College folder and student case, all modules (tutorials and assignment projects), textbooks, learning tools, tutor feedback and marking, College support, progressive Transcripts of Study, Graduate Awards and final Academic Transcripts, access to the eCampus, eNews, Student ID Pass, and access to educational discounts.

And with your Student ID Pass you will have access to a range of academic discounts on magazines and software (which can save you hundreds of dollars on Microsoft and Adobe academic software, including Adobe InDesign).

Course Overview
Do you like colour, texture, shape, image and text? Do you enjoy working with the computer? Does the idea of creating beautiful brochures, inspiring posters or attractive stationery appeal to you? Then graphic design and desktop publishing could be the career for you.

This is one of those careers that allows you to either work from home and have a paid lifestyle or work from an office being paid by someone else.

You don’t need to be artistically talented to do graphic design and desktop publishing. However, you do need an understanding of the elements and principles of design so you can produce quality work that people will appreciate.

In the comfort of your own home you will learn how to design brochures, video covers, CD cases, posters, and a whole range of artwork. This course is specifically designed for the home learner, so it takes you step-by-step through each project. And you will have your work reviewed by a professional designer every step of the way.

This is a fantastic course if you have little or no design experience and want to learn these skills from scratch, right up to the point of being a professional and setting up your own graphic design and desktop publishing business. And the course uses the acclaimed Adobe Indesign software so you know you are learning with the best.

InDesign is now the most used magazine design software worldwide. Harpers Bazaar is produced using it. And Australian Consolidated Press (ACP), Fairfax and other publishing and printing companies in Australia have moved over to it.

ACP (publisher of Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, Cleo, Cosmopolitan, Wheels and The Bulletin ) is the largest InDesign user in the world.

“Using Indesign, our editorial people can now do more of the creative work such as drop shadows and transparency effects directly on the Indesign page.” (ACP)

When you successfully complete your course you will be awarded:

Diploma of Design (Professional Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing)

Entry Requirements
You don’t need any previous experience to undertake the course; however, you will need to have a willingness to learn and the desire to succeed.

no previous experience is required other than basic computer knowledge
access to a standard computer (PC or MAC) with Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista or Windows 7 with printer and Internet connection to access the online tutorials
InDesign CS2, CS3, CS4 or CS5 to use with the online movie tutorials and interactive workbooks
you are provided with a 30-day Adobe InDesign CS5 Trial CD so you can see if the program suits you
as little as an hour a week to learn

The personal attributes you will need to have include:

an interest in graphic design and desktop publishing
an enjoyment of using the computer and basic computer literacy
a reasonable command of written English
a willingness to learn and the desire to succeed

Your Trainers
Our trainers are industry professionals. They have years of experience and are experts in their fields.

Your trainer’s role is to provide you with feedback on your assignment projects and guidance in your direction. They will encourage you, highlight your strengths and weaknesses, and will support your learning.

In addition, you will find our Student Advisers friendly and supportive. They will help you with your requests and provide you with valuable assistance in things such as computer issues, career advice, employment and freelancing matters.

You can even ask for assistance from the Principal, who will give you invaluable feedback on your job application, your freelance business promotion and startup business matters.

We will also contact you periodically by phone, mail and/or e-mail to remind you about your studies and assignment projects. And we regularly notify students and graduates of jobs or opportunities. Our goal is to help you succeed, and to do this we provide more support and service than any other distance college on the planet.